


All the Great Things are Simple

by Star_Crow



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Small Town, Bellarke, Enemies, F/M, Kid Fic, Magnificent Seven AU, Original Character(s), Teen Romance, minor Linctavia
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-05
Updated: 2017-11-01
Packaged: 2018-11-09 12:32:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11104644
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Star_Crow/pseuds/Star_Crow
Summary: "All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope." - Winston ChurchillSix years ago, seven high school boys went missing from Rose Creek. Their names were John Murphy, Nathan Miller, Jasper Jordan, Monty Green, Lincoln Woods, Wells Jaha and Bellamy Blake. And they all had bones to pick with Ark Industries.The Magnificent Seven AU that no one asked for.





	1. A Shark's Smile

“Welcome to the future.” 

Rose Creek was a small town, with even more small town people. They needed any passably influential person to form a council. Thelonius Jaha was the CEO of the local power plant. As much as Clarke detested the man, his seat was undeniable.

Clarke was reminded of her hate when she saw what was under the sheet he’d flourished off of the table.

On the table sat a model of the Ark Industries plant, but it was bigger that Clarke remembered it. The ugly gray buildings extended further, like a disease on the green country land.

“Everyone in this room knows that Ark Industries is the biggest source of income this town has,” Jaha stood up from his seat, turning his eyes to each of them individually. “The world is changing. Things are costing more and more. If Rose Creek is going to make it in this new order, we need to evolve.”

Abby Griffin raised an eyebrow. “And you think that extending the plant is the answer?” 

It was minuscule but Clarke saw Jaha tighten his jaw. 

“The forecasts for the company are promising, but we can’t continue to improve in the current state. We don’t have the room for the facilities we need to compete with the urban businesses.”

Councilman Kane took a closer look at the diorama. “This expansion will give you the room you need to build?”

A red laser flicked around the new site. “Just over 260 hectares, a square mile. It’ll be tight, but my overseers say that an extra reactor could fit. It’ll increase our profits exponentially.”

Clarke almost felt her heart seize when she saw the site location.

“That’s where my farm is, and a lot of other houses,” Clarke said quietly. 

An awkward silence fell in the room.

Clarke Griffin was the most actively practicing doctor in Rose Creek. Almost everyone in the room owed her something, besides their respect. No one but Jaha would be willing to cross her.

“The company will obviously reimburse you the cost of your land twice over. Help resettle you in another area of the town,” 

If Clarke’s heart pumped gasoline, Jaha’s goddamn sanctimonious voice was the spark.

“You know full well that the farm is not mine to sell. It belongs to the Blakes,” Clarke’s voice was rising dangerously as she pushed up from her chair. “Even if it was, what about my son? He loves that place. He’s lived there his whole life.”

“We can’t justify one family over the good of the whole town.” Charles Pike drummed his fingers against the table. “I’m sorry, Clarke.”

Clarke sat back in her seat. “The council does not pass anything without a unanimous vote.”

“I don’t give my vote to this.”

“Nor I. Find a new site and come back to us, Thelonius.”

Clarke had always counted on Abby and Marcus to have her back, ever since Clarke had her son and everyone else had deserted her. 

Jaha was struggling to hide the fury on his face. The rivalry between the Griffins and Jaha was a relatively new thing. Wells had been Clarke’s closest friend since they were in pre-K. 

It had all begun when Jacob Griffin conducted an investigation into Ark Industries’ dealings. Everyone in Rose Creek knew they were dirty. It was a case of no one being clean enough themselves to get them caught. Clarke never knew what Jake had found. He’d called her late one night, begging her to come and visit. He’d had something to tell her and it was urgent, he said. By the time Clarke arrived, he was already dead.

The coroner said a heart attack. 

Bullshit, Clarke said. Jake Griffin had no history of heart problems.

Someone murdered her father, and it was Thelonius. She was sure of it. She had no proof. He didn’t do it with his own hand, but he was involved.

That and the reasons under which Wells Jaha had run away from Rose Creek had begun the war. It was cold, for now.

Jaha leaned across the table towards her, far too close to Clarke’s face for her liking. “The money this town could get from that new reactor could be used to deal with the Seven.”

Every councilor stiffened at the mention of the Seven.

Six years ago, seven high school boys went missing from Rose Creek. 

Their names were John Murphy, Nathan Miller, Jasper Jordan, Monty Green, Lincoln Woods, Wells Jaha and Bellamy Blake. They all had bones to pick with Ark Industries.

Mothers, fathers, siblings, friends, all lost under the same mysterious circumstances that Clarke had lost her father to.

The Seven were the closest thing that Rose Creek had to vigilantes. In the years of their supposed absence, there’d been spates of Jaha’s dodgy officials and cruel muscle turning up dead. Cargo being stolen right from the gates of the plant. Money being stolen from inside it. Opinions of them varied wildly depending on who you asked. Some wanted them caught and jailed for their actions. 

Others, like Clarke, wanted them to bring down Jaha to thunderous applause.

Jaha bared his teeth at her in shark’s smile. “But you don’t want that, do you, Miss Griffin? You’d rather see Bellamy Blake in your bed than in a prison cell.”

Clarke did nothing but smile back.

“That’s quite enough, Thelonius,” Kane interrupted before slamming the chairman’s gavel. “This meeting is over. The council does not give permission for the expansion of the Rose Creek plant.”

Jaha had always kept one eye on Clarke. The Griffins were a force to be reckoned with. For this, she would have his full attention.

She could feel his hot gaze on her when she left the room with the rest of the councilors. Abby followed her like a shadow at her back, right to her car. Even Octavia could sense something was wrong when Clarke called to tell her she was coming home. Clarke didn’t tell her about the farm. The younger girl wouldn’t take it well, especially delivered over the phone.

Clarke was inevitably cornered just as she put her hand on the car door.

“Miss Griffin, may I have a word?”

All politeness. As per usual.

Abby turned to protest, inching a step in front of her daughter. Clarke’s hand against her arm stopped her from going further.

“It’s okay, Mom. Go home. I’ll see you in the morning,” 

Clarke’s voice was gentle and warm, the same voice she used on her own child. On her son, the tone filled him with reassurance and he did what she asked happily. Abby was not so easily swayed. Her eyes were uncertain, but she did move away before retreating to her own car, further down Main Street.

“I assume there’s nothing I can offer that’ll make you give up the farm?” Jaha said after a moment, leaning an umbrella against his shoulder.

Clarke looked around, anywhere except at Jaha. The rain had been falling all day, but it had now become torrential. Getting her pick-up along the track back home would be a challenge.

“Like I said,” Clarke replied. “The farm is not mine to sell, even if I wanted to.”

“Ah yes, it belongs to Master Blake, as his mother’s eldest child, Nevertheless,” Jaha snorted derisively. “You can’t honestly expect me to believe you have no way of contacting him.”

Jaha’s next sentence was weighted, pushing into the more dangerous conversational territory. “He is, after all, the father of your son, yes?”

The high school romance of Bellamy Blake and Clarke Griffin had always been destined to end in tears. The boy who lived on the rough East Side falls in love with the pretty rich girl. Tale as old as time. The love story was hot and passionate, full of lust and daring, but it was over as fast as a flick of pages. A pregnancy test and a run-away later, they both learned it was only the first chapter.

Who would have thought Clarke a teen mom? She’d been the talk of the town ever since her belly had started to show. Raising a son who had way too much of his father in him, sitting on the Council, and training to be a doctor. She couldn’t do wholly right by anyone. 

Except for her Noah, that is.

Clarke’s smile was sweet, infuriating. “Mr. Jaha, I have not seen Bellamy Blake since he left town six years ago. He leads the Seven. Why would I have means of contact with a criminal?”

“You’re a smart girl, Clarke. Just like your father. And look where that got him.”

“A sudden heart attack in his office?” She raised an eyebrow.

Jaha laughed hollowly as he shifted to turn on his heel. “I think we both know there was more to it than a blocked artery. You just can’t prove anything.”

Her voice turned cold, hard as stone. “Yet.”

One word made Jaha seize in motion, turning back to face her. He couldn’t hurt her. Not here. Clarke had to remind herself of that as he towered over her in the downpour of rain, all alone.

“You should watch where you pry. Blakes have a history of not doing well in Rose Creek.”

She thought of Aurora, a mother long clean of drugs, found dead in Clarke’s very home from what seemed to be a heroin overdose. Bellamy, ran out of town, separated from his son, by the threat of a noiseless death for him, too. Octavia, in and out of prison for petty crimes since she was barely eleven. 

Clarke’s next sentence was her ultimatum. It had been since the moment her mom had placed Noah in her arms. 

“You threaten my son again, Jaha, and you’ll have more to worry about than just the Seven.”

Jaha just smiles back at her. “We’ll see, Miss Griffin.”

Clarke doesn’t cry on her drive home. Tears had always come quickly to her eyes when she was in high school but all her tears had been long wrung out. The memories were vivid. Clutching Abby’s hand at her father’s funeral while colleagues took turns giving eulogies at the podium over his hole in the ground. Watching the doors close behind Wells when he took a bus out of town with nothing but a night bag full of clothes. Sitting in the flatbed of her pick-up truck while Bellamy cradled Noah, saying goodbye mere days after they’d only just met.

The time for tears was over.

Octavia Blake was lounging on the couch when Clarke finally got the truck up the road to the farmhouse. The TV was on but quiet, a burbling in the background mixed with the crackling of the fire.

“Hey, O,” Clarke sighed, setting a bag of groceries down on the floor.

“You’re back,” The girl sat up, her hair ruffled as though she’d been sleeping. “How’d the council meeting go?”

Clarke opened her mouth to tell her about the plant, but the words didn’t come. How could she tell Octavia that Jaha wanted to take more of what little the Blakes had left? It would crush her. Besides, if she had her way and she would, the farm would stay theirs anyway.

“Fine. Just talks about getting more income for the town,” she answered instead. “Noah been okay?”

“Not a peep out of him. He sleeps like the dead,” 

“Trust me, that’s a new development,” Clarke handed Octavia a milkshake from the paper bag.

“You want me to stay a little longer? If you want to take a shower or something,”

“That’s okay. You go home and get some sleep. You’ve got college in the morning, right?”

The younger girl nodded mournfully, rolling her eyes. “Yeah, but I don’t know if it’s for me, Clarke. The other kids, the teachers, they all look down on me.”

Something in Clarke’s heart panged. “Give it time, Octavia. Bellamy would want you to.”

In fact, Bellamy was the one paying her fees. The mysterious wealthy benefactor himself, putting the exact amounts into her funds each month. Octavia didn’t know that. Clarke held a fair share of Bellamy’s many secrets and tricks.

“See you tomorrow, Clarke.” 

Clarke watched the tail lights of Octavia’s car disappear into the night before she shut the curtains and snuck into her bedroom. Hers and Bellamy’s, once. It was a plain room. Magnolia walls and cream sheets, the only bright colors in glass frames on her windowsill. She listened for a moment for Noah stirring, but all she heard was the sound of her own breath.

On Bellamy’s last night in Rose Creek, he had pressed a phone into her hand. An old flip model, removable battery. 

“Incase you need me. Emergencies.” he’d said.

“Let me guess, you’re the only number on it?” she’d replied snarkily.

He’d smirked at her. God, she missed that smirk. “Always am.”

It was that phone that Clarke was pulling from a shoebox in the bottom of her wardrobe. The metal surface was cold to her touch. She’d been tempted to use the phone so many times in the last six years. Pretty much all of Noah’s firsts that Bellamy missed. His first smile and his first word. She wanted to call and tell him about his first solid meal, his first steps. Even his first day of school.

Clarke had resisted the urge every time. 

It took a few moments for the screen to flare to life. One name in the contact book, just like he’d promised. Bell. Rebel King.

I need you.

Her text didn’t explain a thing. Vagueness always irritated Bellamy for as long as she’d known him, but she knew he’d come. When her back was against the wall, he always did.

An hour passed. Two. So did a bottle of wine as Clarke sat on the sofa in the silence, watching the clock tick on the mantlepiece. She listened to Noah’s muffled snores, the rain against the window. She wondered if he’d got her message. It had been six years. What if he’d lost the phone? What if he was out of range? What if he was hurt? 

Bellamy had always been her whole lot of what ifs?

Clarke was so lost in the realms of her own mind, she barely heard the quiet brush of knuckles against the door. She’d dreamed that sound so many times that hearing seemed an impossibility. Yet she flew to her feet, rushed to crouch at the keyhole. 

And there, on her doorstep, finally, stood Bellamy Blake.


	2. The Sentimentalists

2324 days.

Bellamy muttered the figure under his breath as he scratched yet another tally mark into the wall. If you could call his poky office in an abandoned warehouse a bedroom.

2324 days since he’d left Clarke behind. 2324 days since Bellamy had last seen his son face to face. He’d been a baby then, less than a week old. Six years on, Noah was a totally different kid now but he was still Bellamy’s. Bellamy still recognised his night-dark features anywhere when he watched him from afar. Octavia had changed, too, her childhood softness melting away into sharp adult features. Clarke was just the same way he had left her, yet wildly different at the same time.

Too risky. Dumb. Stupid. He could get himself killed. That was what the rest of the boys said when they first caught him sneaking out to go see Clarke, Noah and Octavia. They still said it now, but he had always shrugged them off. Seeing his family every once in a while was the only thing that kept him sane all these years. Seeing the distance between them gave him anger. Bellamy’s anger was the realest thing he had, writhing and roaring like a living thing. That anger gave him fight. Fight he could use. 

“Hey, Bell?” He had heard Miller’s footsteps before his head popped around the door. “Jaha, Murphy and Linc are back from their run.”

Bellamy looked up. “Safe?” 

A grin broke on the younger boy’s face. “They’re fine. Got a pretty good haul, too.”

He just nodded, before turning back to the wall. “I’ll be down in a minute. Start putting the stuff away.”

Miller had disappeared again without a word when Bellamy looked back over his shoulder. Atleast the run had come back safe, to whatever home was now, and with supplies to boot. It had been bothering him since they’d left. Instances where Bellamy had to hold one of his friends down while Lincoln removed a bullet, stitched a cut, cleaned a wound, were far more common that he’d like. In the early days, almost every run Bellamy sent out resulted in an injury. Never had he wanted Clarke to be with him more than when that happened. Eventually they learned to be better at the game of cat and mouse through blood.

“They got us cheese fries. Cheese fries,” Jasper whispered as Bellamy descended the stairs, waving the lurid blue packet before his eyes.

“That’s great, Jasper,” Bellamy couldn’t help but smile at the youngest member of his Seven. “But did you guys pick up anything long-term useful?” He quirked an eyebrow expectantly. “Like pain meds, bandages, water, et cetera?”

“Yep, it’s all here.” Murphy offered him a smug smirk. 

Bellamy let out a sigh of relief that he’d been holding since he’d watched the trio ride out on their bikes. He didn’t know what he’d do if the Seven became the Six. Losing Finn Collins at the start had been one of the roughest things Bellamy had ever experienced, and he hadn’t even liked the boy in all honesty.

Still, there was a prickling sensation in the back of Bellamy’s head that told him something was wrong. As he looked over the other boys rifling through the duffel bags, it clicked.

“This is a hell of a lot of stuff for just one store.”

When he looked up, Wells and Lincoln dropped their eyes immediately. Only Murphy was brave enough to hold his stare. A chill ran up and down his spine. 

“That’s because we went to two. We didn’t get enough at the first hit so we busted into the K-mart up north to make the difference.” Murphy explained steadily.

That was why they’d taken so long. “We only had a plan for one.”

“The stocks were so low at the grocery store you told us to go to. We wouldn’t have lasted the month.” Lincoln chipped in, finally facing up to Bellamy.

“Then we would have done an extra run,” Bellamy’s voice was steely. “You could have gotten into trouble and we wouldn’t have known where to find you, you idiots.”

Murphy opened his mouth to, what he assumed, argue but Wells stuck an elbow into his ribs.

Bellamy weighed up his options in the few seconds of silence. He could make an argument out of this easily. They didn’t agree on it, they didn’t have his seal of approval, they could have been caught by Jaha or killed at worst. Arguments though, in a place and a situation like this, were difficult. They were in close proximity to one another for essentially for every hour of every day and if they were going to survive this, they needed to be a unit.

Bellamy exhaled. “Next time you want to pull a stunt like that, for gods’ sakes just radio back and tell us where you’re going first.” 

The tension in the room relaxed and the assessing of the goods continued on, as Lincoln wandered to Bellamy’s side.

“Sorry about going off the track, Bell.”

Bellamy just waved him off as he presented him with a smaller gym bag, filled to the brim with liter bottles and first aid stuff. “No drama out there?” 

Lincoln shook his head. “None at all. Town was dead as a door-nail. There was some sort of meeting going on at the Hall, I think.”

Third Thursday of the month, of course. Town Council meeting.

“Good.” He handed the bag back to Lincoln. As he turned to leave them to unpack, he caught his shoulder. 

“I saw Clarke.”

It wasn’t unusual for the boys to come across Clarke by chance out on their runs. Rose Creek was a very small town and she was the doctor after all, but still Bellamy’s heart seized for a few beats. “Where?”

“Outside the Hall. I obviously didn’t stop for long but it looked like she was arguing with Jaha.”

What are you doing, Clarke? 

Stay under the radar as much as she could, keep herself and Noah and Octavia safe until it was over for good. That was Clarke’s role in this mess, since she’d refused to grant him the mercy of moving out of Rose Creek altogether. Picking fights with Jaha didn’t fit under that token. The question that really mattered was what the confrontation was about.

Bellamy’s next thought was whether the phone held the answer.

For the first year or so of this endeavor of his, that goddamn phone had been the bane of his life. Awake all hours of the night staring into that infernal glowing screen, torn between hoping that he’d see a message from Clarke and hoping that he wouldn’t. Murphy, of all people, was the one to get him past it. 

“You don’t want her to call, Bellamy because you know if she does, then there’s something wrong with her, the kid, or your sister, so let’s hope that this phone never goes off, right?”

Murphy had hidden the cell from him for months, right up until the point that he had essentially forgotten about it before he gave it back. Bellamy only ever checked the phone in case of emergency. 

Could this be a case of emergency? He didn’t know. Probably not.

Still he found himself tearing through his case of belongings for that shitty disposable cell phone. He didn’t have much to look through really, mostly photo frames. He had one of him, his mom and Octavia. They didn’t have the money to waste on their own camera back then but they had this one shot: the three of them on the couch, Aurora in the middle with an arm around he and Octavia each.

There were more of he and Clarke. A professional photograph on glossy paper of their prom night. Clarke laughing, clinging to his arm in her beautiful violet dress that she’d been so proud of selecting. Snaps taken off of Clarke’s phone, cold nights spent in their bedrooms or out beneath the stars. Those ones were low quality and pixelated, but they were probably the clearest window into his old life. The prom photo was lovely, but it was perfect and polished in the way that he and Clarke had never been. He and Clarke had always been a shot of a messy, blurry half-moment that only they could make sense of.

He had more photos of Noah than he had the others combined. Moments of him that Bellamy captured when he was newborn, clutching onto his parents’ fingers in his crib. The newer ones of Noah that Clarke had smuggled to him over the years. Pictures of his son playing with his toys or on the swings at the park, blowing out the candles on his birthday cakes. 

Bellamy hated the longshots, where he could see Clarke and Abby and Octavia standing beside him, because he knew he should be there, too. Instead what he saw, and what Noah would probably see aswell, was an empty space.

There was a notification on the phone. Bellamy’s heart stopped.

1 Text Message from: Princess

She’d left three words for him. I need you.

How fucking vague was that? Now his mind was working at a million miles an hour. The possibilities were endless. Was something really wrong, was Noah sick or hurt? Was Clarke sick or hurt? Or his sister? 

Or had Clarke finally given in after all these years and summoned him just because she wanted to see him?

If that was the case, Bellamy wasn’t sure whether he’d be furious with her for panicking him like that or on Cloud Nine because she gave him an excuse to go see her face-to-face.

Either way, he was going.

Bellamy jumped straight out of the window, keys to his bike in hand. He didn’t tell the boys. They wouldn’t even notice he was gone. They never tended to bother him once he’d gone to bed and their impromptu garage was out of hearing range. He would be at the farmhouse and back before the sun started to rise.

For all he lectured the rest of the Seven on staying safe, Bellamy wasn’t especially concerned about it that night. The rain lashing his face was ice cold as he flew down the highway into Rose Creek. This late, in this weather, the roads were empty of commuters and Bellamy had the drive to himself.

It was way sooner than he’d of liked before he was standing on Clarke’s doorstep.

His doorstep, Bellamy corrected himself as he raised a fist to knock the door. Clarke just lived here because he’d asked her to. He didn’t know why it even mattered. Some twisted sense of having Noah close to him?

Gonna stand out here all night? Knock the fucking door, Bellamy.

As soon as his knuckles made contact with the old wood, regret shot through him. Loud, too loud. He couldn’t wake Noah. He couldn’t see him. 

Just as Bellamy’s hand cringed away from the door, Clarke’s eye appeared at the keyhole. Bright and blue and afraid, before the door was yanked open before him. 

To see Clarke this close dazed him a bit, like watching a particular star in the sky for it to suddenly fall one day. Little things about her he’d sort of forgotten about suddenly came into focus. The way her hair rippled when it was wet, the arch of her neck, the position of her father’s ring on her finger. 

He didn’t really notice when she grabbed him by his lapels and hauled him inside the house.

Her hand curled into a ball against his jacket as she closed the door with the other.

“You came.” she breathed.

“You called.”

There were tears in Clarke’s eyes, glistening in the light of the fire. 

Of all the things that seemed unchanged about Clarke, the living room of his youth was gone. Sure, the walls and the furniture were still the same but for the first time, his house looked lived in. Noah’s toys were scattered under foot, his drawings decorating the fridge, a pile of clothes left waiting by the washing machine, a stack of empty glasses and dishes abandoned in the sink. 

This was the normal life that Bellamy wanted, was meant to have.

“Do you want to see him?” Her voice was so soft he could barely hear her.

Bellamy knew in his heart that the sensible answer to that question was no. Noah had never met him, might not even know who he was. All he’d practically done for this boy was help to create him and then bail. Even if Noah did know who he was, he couldn’t stay here with them. He was a fugitive, couldn’t show his face in this town in the light of day. He’d have to be back at the warehouse like nothing had happened tomorrow.

Bellamy nodded all the same. 

As she guided him up the stairs, hand entwined with his, Bellamy found himself stepping into the same safe spots as she did so the stairs wouldn’t creak. 

Clarke the sentimentalist was a rare thing. Pointless to someone as naturally clinical and practical as her. And yet when he got to the landing, Clarke turned on quiet feet towards his old room. Noah was in his space, even though there would have been another two vacant rooms from which to choose from. His heart twinged.

On the door someone, Octavia probably, had carved his name: Noah Blake. 

That had been Clarke’s lasting fuck you to Jaha. She and Bellamy weren’t married. Bellamy wasn’t even involved. Noah could have taken the Griffin surname, or the typical double-barrel at least. Clarke had insisted on his name. 

In a coincidental sort of way, Bellamy’s last fuck you to Jaha was Noah himself. There was a Blake in Rose Creek that he hadn’t got to and that boy was the mirror image of his father that Bellamy had to relearn every time he saw the kid. Spirited brown eyes to reflect the fierce soul beneath. Olive skin flecked with freckles along his shoulders and cheekbones. Wild off-black hair that refused to be brushed flat. 

In the glow of his night-light, Bellamy reached out to touch his son’s curls. 

Clarke held her breath as he did so. This was the first time Noah would feel his father’s touch in over six years and he wouldn’t even know it.

Bellamy was barely an inch away before he drew his hand back sharply to his chest, as if he’d been shocked. In the dark, she couldn’t see, but from his short breaths, Clarke thought he was crying, 

“I’ll wake him up if you want.”

He took a steadying breath before answering her but his voice still came out strangled. “What’s the point? He wouldn’t recognise me, would he?”

She jutted her chin towards Noah’s bedside table. “Of course he would.”

After a few seconds, Bellamy managed to tear his gaze away from his sleeping son and in the direction that Clarke had indicated. For all the photos Bellamy had of Noah, it appeared that Noah had one of him, too. Framed in gilt was a picture he didn’t even know existed; himself sat in the flatbed of Clarke’s old truck, not looking at the camera, head bent over a week old Noah. 

“Your hair was so long then.” Clarke whispered, pressing her body into his back.

And so it was. Bellamy had been the victim of the school trend. When he and Clarke had dated, his hair had covered his nape and brushed the top of his shoulder blades. Clarke had spent hours playing with it. 

He’d buzzed it all off the minute he left Rose Creek.

Slowly, so slowly, Bellamy began to back away from Noah’s bedside, coaxing Clarke out of the door behind him. In the wane light of the landing, she looked like some sort of ethereal being. He wanted to kiss her, as he’d fantasized and practiced in his dreams, like he’d done in this very place before Noah had even existed. Instead, he gripped her shoulder.

“How much does he know?” Bellamy didn’t know if he was frightened or hopeful.

Clarke hesitated. “All of it.”

He released his grip on her, as well as a shaky sigh. “Look at him, Clarke, he’s six years old.”

“Kids are vicious, Bellamy. Their parents know. I bet they do, too. They would have told him. I wanted him to hear it from me, the right way,” Her eyes softened. “All he ever talks about is you coming home one day.”

“Not now. Not like this.”

Clarke just nodded, gave his hand a comforting squeeze. She knew that he’d say that, force himself to turn away for their own goods. If Bellamy went in and saw that kid properly, he’d never be able to go back to the Seven again.

“What am I doing here, Clarke?” Bellamy allowed one more solitary tear to spill, shaking his head roughly. 

Her eyes flickered into Noah’s room, before she gently pulled the door shut. Noah had too much going on in his little head already without her adding more to the pile. 

“Bellamy,” She took a deep breath in. “Jaha’s trying to buy out the farmhouse to extend the plant.”

His stomach dropped. Of all the things he’d worried about, this was the last scenario he’d imagined.

“The deeds are in your name so he can’t force me into handing it over on his own, but since you’re technically a criminal and you’ve been absent for years now, he can file a court motion to have the house put on the market.” Clarke bit her lip. “You know I can’t afford to buy the place, let alone outbid Jaha. I’ve still got so many uni fees to pay and a kid to look after.”

She was expecting him to explode. The muscle near his jaw would start to tick, his fingers would curl up into shaking fists, and his eyes would take on that look of pure wrath that could make stone cower before him. He did those things, but then he let it go.

“Okay.”

Clarke widened her eyes at him incredulously. “What do you mean, okay? This is serious, Bellamy.”

“I know, trust me. I’ll handle it. He’s not getting this place. It’s Noah’s.”

“But-”

“I said I’ll handle it, Clarke.”

There it was. That look of absolute resolve that gave Clarke the courage to go on and trust him even if it made no logical sense, even if her head screamed at her that she was making a major wrong step. Bellamy, as she’d learned over the years, was throwing herself off the edge of a cliff and hoping against hope that he’d catch her before she hit the rocks. He hadn’t failed her yet.

“In the meantime,” Clarke followed as he went back down the stairs. “Please don’t pick fights with Jaha, especially not when you’re on your own. Stay out in the open with a few people around you atleast. Put a few more locks on the door.”

“He wouldn’t try it, Bell.”

He clenched his jaw a little tighter. “My mom said that. You don’t ever know.”

“Alright,” she sighed. “Alright I’ll do it.”

Bellamy looked around the living room again with a wistful look worked into his features. “I’ve got to go.”

“Are you close to anything, Bellamy? Is there an end? Or is this going to be goodbye for another six years? If it’s bad news, it’s bad news. I just want the truth. I can’t stand the not-knowing. I know you said to move on if I wanted but, I still love you.” Clarke blurted out as he put his hand on the door knob.

“I think so. I’m trying. Or we are, more like.” He paused. “Can that be enough for just a little while longer?”

Clarke wanted to say no. Get down on her knees, beg him to give up his quest for vengeance and stay at home with her and Noah. They’d move if they had to, she just wanted them to be together.

She nodded.

He clicked the door open. “Clarke? If he really does know me like you say, can you tell him that I want to be with him? I’ll come home soon.” Bellamy set his jaw. “That I love him?”

“He knows, Bell, he knows.”

The look of relief on Bellamy’s face told Clarke of a hundred, a thousand nights spent laying awake worrying about that very thing. 

“I still love you, too, Clarke. I hope you know that.”

And then he was gone, disappeared into the night like he’d never even been there.


End file.
